Show me the ruble, say Crimeans

Mar. 7, 2014
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A woman feeds pigeons on the seafront promenade in Sevastopol, while warships station in the bay, on Friday. Pro-Kremlin gunmen kept foreign observers from entering Crimea as Russia welcomed the prospect of the Ukrainian peninsula joining the country amid the worst East-West crisis since the Cold War. / VIKTOR DRACHEV, AFP/Getty Images

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

by Oren Dorell, USA TODAY

ARMYANSK, Russian-occupied Crimea, Ukraine - Russian flags fly from businesses, car dashboards and official buildings throughout Crimea, where many ethnic Russians say they are not opposed to seceding from Ukraine and joining Russia.

But the Russia they would join imposes on its own citizens has devolved into a repressive state in many ways, where people and politicians who oppose Vladimir Putin find themselves imprisoned on charges rights groups say are fraudulent.

Protesters are beaten, journalists threatened, the courts are rigged and industries are parceled out to favored businessmen, according to opposition party members in Moscow.

Alexander Pospelov, a bartender who was born in Russia and served in the Soviet military, spoke of his experiences of the Soviet Union when asked why he might prefer living in a repressive Russia.

"It's true that the Soviet Union had lots of minuses," Pospelov said. "It also had a lot of pluses, social pluses. Whatever happens you were absolutely sure whatever you were promised would be fulfilled."

People give a variety of reasons for wanting toe secede to Russia. Some feel more kinship with their Russian speaking brethren, alluding to the forced union under the Soviets that made Crimea, long a region of Russia, part of Ukraine, which itself had its Western lands under Poland for decades.

But most rail against the corruption, the failed economic policies, the constantly changing regimes and venality of the government in Kiev.

Alexander Dragan, a truck trailer salesman who stopped at a roadside eatery after several days traveling the province on a sales trip, said everyone he and a colleague met, from ordinary workers to entrepreneurs, seemed to think things would be better under Russia.

"They said it's a good thing because it will be much easier to trade and that's important to them. None of them said they want to stay in Ukraine. All of them were very happy," Dragan said between sips of lemonade and bites of bread and cabbage salad.

The Supreme Council of the Crimea, its parliament, agreed Thursday to hold a referendum on secession March 16.

Dragan, a Russian-speaking Ukrainian from Kremenchug in central Ukraine a few hundred miles from this town near the Ukraine-Crimean border, said concerns about repression and lack of freedoms under Vladimir Putin's Russia never came up.

However, there are people in Crimea who have said in recent days that they have to hide their true feelings in public out of fear of Russian troops, and the pro-Russian mobs who have been beating those who disagree with them. Some people would only express their hatred for the idea of joining Russia if their names were not used.

The protests in Kiev that many Crimeans said worried them - and which led to the ouster of president Viktor Yanukovych - included people protesting violations of human rights and activists seeking greater government transparency and anti-corruption measures.

Mikhail Atabekyan, 43, a jeweler, looked around nervously while chatting with a reporter across from a square where a troop of Russian Cossack militiamen in fatigues and their traditional blue and black hats stood guard outside the Simferopol Council of Ministers.

Rather than pine for the political freedoms - and the risk - that comes with Western markets, he prefers economic security he feels Russia can provide.

Atabekyan was also no fan of the Maidan protest movement whose victory last month in Kiev prompted forces loyal to Russia to seize government facilities in the Crimea days later.

Atabekyan said he believes Russian media reports that allege the protests were planned by the USA and European Union. Joining the European Union, which the new Ukraine interim government is pushing for, would kill Ukraine's economy, whose main trading partner is Russia, Atabekyan said.

But most of Crimea's official trade is with Ukraine, and Crimea's energy is subsidized by the Kiev government, lowering the price dramatically.

"Ukraine's not competitive with the European Union," and its economy would wind up like Spain's and Italy's, he said. "The EU would require us to stop industrial production and we'd all become taxi drivers and cooks. We cannot trust these people."

Asked about political repression in Russia, he said he doesn't get into politics and walked away.

Yulia Kovalenko, 23, who sat smiling behind the counter at a bookstore on a cobble-stoned street in downtown Simferopol, thought joining Russia wasn't a bad idea. Crimea has always been close to Russia, she said, most Crimeans have relatives there, and they do most of their business with Russia, she said.

"For 20 years we lived in Ukraine and didn't see any good from Ukraine," she said.

The Ukrainian, Russian and Crimean television channels carry so many conflicting stories it's hard to know what's true, and she'd never been to western Europe, so Kovalenko said she can't tell if the West would guarantee a better future for Crimea or Ukraine.

And then the violence that accompanied the political upheaval in the Ukrainian capital Kiev was turn off, she said.

"Maybe if the authorities would have done it peacefully without all this fighting, people here would have looked at it with more interest," she said.

Pospelov looked at the Russia option from the perspective of whether it would improve his standard of living.

"We would have cheaper gas, and free movement of goods and people, which is also a benefit for businesses that want to develop," he said.

Russian roads are as bad as Ukraine's pocked and bumpy roads, he said, "but it was always like that."

Though he agrees that both countries "have the worst corruption imaginable. ... I choose the least bad."

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